Kyphosus elegans has an oval, laterally compressed body with a small head and a pointed snout, the forehead slopes steeply in front of the eyes.

[4] The teeth are very characteristic and form a single row in the front of both jaws, they are incisiform and have a rather lanceolate shape, resembling the head of a hockey stick, they have compressed roots and they are set horizontally, creating a striated plate within the oral cavity, There are teeth on the vomer too.

This species feeds mainly on attached algae and will occasionally east plankton and benthic invertebrates.

[7] Kyphosus elegans is considered important for commercial fisheries in the Gulf of Montijo in Panama.

[8] In 1880 Henri Émile Sauvage described a species of Kyphosus from Hawaii from specimens which had been sent to him by a French consul there and named it as Kyphosus sandvicensis but there appears to have been a mix up as his description does not match the type specimen lodged in the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris and recent workers have found that K. sandvicensis is a junior synonym of K. elegans, although Fishbase still treats it as a valid species, with a note that it is a synonym of K.